other rooms one by one, and found that both the attic skylight and the basement garden door were still locked. No windows broken, no other way in or out.
Checking the bathroom, she noticed that the strange brown patch in the wall had dried and vanished overnight. None of it made sense. She returned to the front room and gingerly pushed at the door, letting it swing wide. Inside, nothing was disturbed. The stripes left on the carpet by her vacuum cleaner were unmarred by footprints.
She decided that a stray draught must have pulled open the internal door, but it didn’t explain the smell of sweat. New things were beginning to bother her. The turn in the basement stairs, permanently in shadow. The back window, against which the branches of a dead wisteria tree tapped and scratched like something from a children’s book of witches. Worst of all was the great bathroom that seemed impervious to warmth or light, that bred hairless brown arachnids in its moist recesses and became stained with impossible patches of mildew that spread like cancer, only to recede and disappear before she could prove to anyone that she had not imagined such a thing.
Since the rain had begun to fall virtually without a break, the house had become wet. Sheets and blankets felt damp to the touch. The floorboards and window frames flaked varnish. Plaster felt soft and crumbly beneath the peeling wallpaper. It was quite obvious that Paul didn’t believe her, and nor did Heather, who had begun breezing in for coffee, expecting to be waited on. She had taken Heather to the basement to hear the sound of rushing water, but her neighbour had insisted she could hear nothing, and even went so far as to suggest Kallie’s mind might be playing tricks on her.
She wanted to rent industrial dryers and paint everything white, to let in sun and heat, but they were too short of money to do anything that would make a difference. The monthly mortgage repayment would keep things tight, and according to the papers it was likely to rise soon. Perhaps she shouldn’t have taken Heather’s advice. Even at school, her friend had never been without money. She had rented her first flat in a square just off the King’s Road, and had met her future husband at a polo match, for God’s sake. She and George ate in expensive restaurants, spent their weekends in Paris and Rome, never felt the need to check their bank balances . . .
A white towel lay crumpled in the centre of the bathroom floor. It had definitely been folded on the rack beside the bath, she was sure of it. Paul was away in Manchester again. He’d told her he was going to argue his case for compensation, but had already started spending his redundancy. She wanted to talk, but his mobile had been switched off for hours. Why, what was he doing? Whenever they spent more than three days in close company they quarrelled, but she missed his absurdly inappropriate enthusiasms, his innocent longing for the freedom of youth. The house was less forgiving without him, as if it would only seek to press its peculiar aura when his insouciance was not there to temper it.
The bathroom tap shuddered and clanked when she twisted it. She was about to start washing her hair when the front-door knocker boomed through the house.
Jake Avery was immediately apologetic when he saw her dressing-gown. ‘I’m always getting people out of the bath,’ he told her. ‘I should have called first, but I don’t have your phone number.’
‘Then I’ll give it to you,’ she promised, ushering him in. ‘I was only going to wash my hair because there’s nothing on TV. I’ll make us some tea.’
He seated himself awkwardly on one of the mismatched kitchen stools and looked around. ‘It’s coming along nicely in here.’
‘Thanks. I’m doing it by myself—Paul’s hopeless with DIY.’
‘You should get Elliot in from number 3. He’s good as long as you keep him off the booze. He painted and rewired our place, and now he’s laying the front yard for the builders’ merchant at the end of the street. You know, the piece of waste ground old Garrett was trying to get his hands on? It’s going to be a car park.’
‘I don’t think Mr Copeland is interested in the job. I’d like to take a couple of walls out and stop the rooms looking quite so Victorian.’
‘Yeah, Paul told me your